1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method and system for classification of digital facial images received over wireless digital networks or the Internet and retrieval of information associated with a classified image.
2. Description of the Related Art
Classification of facial images using feature recognition software is currently used by various government agencies such as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) for detecting terrorists, detecting suspected cases of identity fraud, automating border and passport control, and correcting mistakes in their respective facial image databases. Facial images stored in the DMV or DHS are digitized and stored in centralized databases, along with associated information on the person. Examples of companies that provide biometric facial recognition software include Cross Match Technologies, Cognitec, Cogent Systems, and Iridian Technologies; of these, Cognitec also provides a kiosk for digitally capturing images of people for storage into their software.
Your face is an important part of who you are and how people identify you. Imagine how hard it would be to recognize an individual if all faces looked the same. Except in the case of identical twins, the face is arguably a person's most unique physical characteristic. While humans have had the innate ability to recognize and distinguish different faces for millions of years, computers are just now catching up.
Visionics, a company based in New Jersey, is one of many developers of facial recognition technology. The twist to its particular software, FACEIT, is that it can pick someone's face out of a crowd, extract that face from the rest of the scene and compare it to a database full of stored images. In order for this software to work, it has to know what a basic face looks like. Facial recognition software is based on the ability to first recognize faces, which is a technological feat in itself, and then measure the various features of each face.
If you look in the mirror, you can see that your face has certain distinguishable landmarks. These are the peaks and valleys that make up the different facial features. Visionics defines these landmarks as nodal points. There are about 80 nodal points on a human face. A few of the nodal points that are measured by the FACEIT software: distance between eyes; width of nose; depth of eye sockets; cheekbones; Jaw line; and chin. These nodal points are measured to create a numerical code that represents the face in a database. This code is referred to as a faceprint and only fourteen to twenty-two nodal points are necessary for the FACEIT software to complete the recognition process.
Facial recognition methods may vary, but they generally involve a series of steps that serve to capture, analyze and compare your face to a database of stored images. The basic process that is used by the FACEIT software to capture and compare images is set forth below and involves Detection, Alignment, Normalization, Representation, and Matching. To identify someone, facial recognition software compares newly captured images to databases of stored images to see if that person is in the database.
Detection is when the system is attached to a video surveillance system, the recognition software searches the field of view of a video camera for faces. If there is a face in the view, it is detected within a fraction of a second. A multi-scale algorithm is used to search for faces in low resolution. The system switches to a high-resolution search only after a head-like shape is detected.
Alignment is when a face is detected, the system determines the head's position, size and pose. A face needs to be turned at least thirty-five degrees toward the camera for the system to register the face.
Normalization is when the image of the head is scaled and rotated so that the head can be registered and mapped into an appropriate size and pose. Normalization is performed regardless of the head's location and distance from the camera. Light does not impact the normalization process.
Representation is when the system translates the facial data into a unique code. This coding process allows for easier comparison of the newly acquired facial data to stored facial data.
Matching is when the newly acquired facial data is compared to the stored data and linked to at least one stored facial representation.
The heart of the FACEIT facial recognition system is the Local Feature Analysis (LFA) algorithm. This is the mathematical technique the system uses to encode faces. The system maps the face and creates the faceprint. Once the system has stored a faceprint, it can compare it to the thousands or millions of faceprints stored in a database. Each faceprint is stored as an 84-byte file.
One of the first patents related to facial recognition technology is Rothfjell, U.S. Pat. No. 3,805,238 for a Method For Identifying Individuals using Selected Characteristics Body Curves. Rothfjell teaches an identification system in which major features (e.g. the shape of a person's nose in profile) are extracted from an image and stored. The stored features are subsequently retrieved and overlaid on a current image of the person to verify identity.
Another early facial recognition patent is Himmel, U.S. Pat. No. 4,020,463 for an Apparatus And A Method For Storage And Retrieval Of Image Patterns. Himmel discloses digitizing a scanned image into binary data which is then compressed and then a sequence of coordinates and vector values are generated which describe the skeletonized image. The coordinates and vector values allow for compact storage of the image and facilitate regeneration of the image.
Yet another is Gotanda, U.S. Pat. No. 4,712,103 for a Door Lock Control System. Gotanda teaches, inter alia, storing a digitized facial image in a non-volatile ROM on a key, and retrieving that image for comparison with a current image of the person at the time he/she request access to a secured area. Gotanda describes the use of image compression, by as much as a factor of four, to reduce the amount of data storage capacity needed by the ROM that is located on the key.
Yet another is Lu, U.S. Pat. No. 4,858,000. Lu teaches an image recognition system and method for identifying ones of a predetermined set of individuals, each of whom has a digital representation of his or her face stored in a defined memory space.
Yet another is Tal, U.S. Pat. No. 4,975,969. Tal teaches an image recognition system and method in which ratios of facial parameters (which Tal defines a distances between definable points on facial features such as a nose, mouth, eyebrow etc.) are measured from a facial image and are used to characterize the individual. Tal, like Lu in U.S. Pat. No. 4,858,000, uses a binary image to find facial features.
Yet another is Lu, U.S. Pat. No. 5,031,228. Lu teaches an image recognition system and method for identifying ones of a predetermined set of individuals, each of whom has a digital representation of his or her face stored in a defined memory space. Face identification data for each of the predetermined individuals are also stored in a Universal Face Model block that includes all the individual pattern images or face signatures stored within the individual face library.
Still another is Burt, U.S. Pat. No. 5,053,603. Burt teaches an image recognition system using differences in facial features to distinguish one individual from another. Burt's system uniquely identifies individuals whose facial images and selected facial feature images have been learned by the system. Burt's system also “generically recognizes” humans and thus distinguishes between unknown humans and non-human objects by using a generic body shape template.
Still another is Turk et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,164,992. Turk teaches the use of an Eigenface methodology for recognizing and identifying members of a television viewing audience. The Turk system is designed to observe a group of people and identify each of the persons in the group to enable demographics to be incorporated in television ratings determinations.
Still another is Deban et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,386,103. Deban teaches the use of an Eigenface methodology for encoding a reference face and storing said reference face on a card or the like, then retrieving said reference face and reconstructing it or automatically verifying it by comparing it to a second face acquired at the point of verification. Deban teaches the use of this system in providing security for Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) transactions, check cashing, credit card security and secure facility access.
Yet another is Lu et al., U.S. Pat. No. 5,432,864. Lu teaches the use of an Eigenface methodology for encoding a human facial image and storing it on an “escort memory” for later retrieval or automatic verification. Lu teaches a method and apparatus for employing human facial image verification for financial transactions.
Technologies provided by wireless carriers and cellular phone manufacturers enable the transmission of facial or object images between phones using Multimedia Messaging Services (MMS) as well as to the Internet over Email (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol, SMTP) and Wireless Access Protocol (WAP). Examples of digital wireless devices capable of capturing and receiving images and text are camera phones provided by Nokia, Motorola, LG, Ericsson, and others. Such phones are capable of handling images as JPEGs over MMS, Email, and WAP across many of the wireless carriers: Cingular, T-Mobile, (GSM/GPRS), and Verizon (CDMA) and others.
Neven, U.S. Patent Publication 2005/0185060, for an Image Base Inquiry system For Search Engines For Mobile Telephones With Integrated Camera, discloses a system using a mobile telephone digital camera to send an image to a server that converts the image into symbolic information, such as plain text, and furnishes the user links associated with the image which are provided by search engines.
Neven, et al., U.S. Patent Publication 2006/0012677, for an Image-Based Search Engine For Mobile Phones With Camera, discloses a system that transmits an image of an object to a remote server which generates three confidence values and then only generates a recognition output from the three confidence values, with nothing more. I
Adam et al., U.S. Patent Publication 2006/0050933, for a Single Image Based Multi-Biometric System And Method which integrates face, skin and iris recognition to provide a biometric system.
Until recently, acquiring information about someone from a real-time image has always been the domain of science fiction novels. Recently, the government and large companies (such as casinos) have implemented face recognition systems to identify individuals from a real-time image. However, do to the costs and lack of a database these systems are not available to the individual member of the general public. Further, the present systems rely on the individual being present geographically and an image of the individual being provided on a predetermined database such as government database of images of terrorists or a casino database of images of known “card cheaters.”